Dr.
Gordon R B Skinner MD (First Class Honours),
DSc, FRCOG, FRCPath, a Short Biography
(UPDATED
18th January 2005)
Gordon
Skinner was born in Glasgow in 1942 and attended Kelvinside
Academy Grammar School where he was dux proxima
accessit. Dr Skinner is widowed with a daughter Fiona and
two sons Niall and David; his wife Janet was a school teacher
who sadly passed away in December 2003.
He graduated in
Medicine at the University of Glasgow in 1965 and following
house jobs in Glasgow and Midlands of England specialised in
Obstetrics and Gynaecology and later in Virology and in 1976
became Senior Lecturer in Medical Microbiology at the University
of Birmingham with Consultant status at the Queen Elizabeth
Hospital in Birmingham.
His main
interest concerned development of vaccines;
A vaccine
against herpes virus infection underwent successful Phase III
trials in the United States but was somewhat costly to
manufacture but his research group have recently developed a
more streamlined method of vaccine production and hope to enter
Phase I trials within the next eighteen months.
His group have
also invented - in conjunction with the Public Health Laboratory
Service U.K - a vaccine against Aids using a unique approach
which was designed to allow rapid preparation of the vaccine
against new strains of virus which might emerge in the global
population; safety studies have been completed at the Russian
AIDS Centre, Moscow, Russia and his group are now seeking
finance for Phase I clinical trial.
Finally his
group developed a vaccine against Staphylococcal infection; this
vaccine has been manufactured in the Norwegian Institute of
Public Health in Oslo, Norway and the Phase I clinical trial has
(coincidentally) begun on the day of writing (January 24th
2005). Phase II trial is scheduled to begin in 2006.
Dr Skinner’s
research portfolio for which he was awarded the prestigious
Doctorate of Science by the University of Birmingham can be
found in his CV.
His research
has extended to the clinical arena. Some ten years ago he was
asked by colleagues to see patients who were deemed to have
myalgic encephalopathy or chronic fatigue syndrome or post viral
syndrome or post viral fatigue on account of his interest in
virus disease. He noted that a number of these patients had
clinical features of hypothyroidism but had ‘normal’ levels of
thyroid hormones which would lead most workers in the field to
reject a diagnosis of hypothyroidism. Dr Skinner has since
treated and returned to health many patients who were clinically
hypothyroid but had normal thyroid chemistry and has reported
these results in a preliminary paper entitled “Clinical response
to thyroxine sodium in clinically hypothyroid but biochemically
euthyroid patients”. He is disappointed that many doctors have
little enthusiasm or will to examine this critical shortfall in
patient care which in part motivated his book “Diagnosis and
Management of Hypothyroidism”.
Other of his
books are en route to publication. “The Vaccine Man” is a
factual and autobiographical account of Dr Skinner’s life which
poignantly describes difficulties in taking important and
exciting research discoveries from the laboratory to the global
market and thus ensuring their availability towards alleviation
of human suffering; the book has not been without its critics
not least his lovely late wife Janet who described the work as a
masterpiece of astonishing tedium and self aggrandisement.
“Emotional
Statistics” is Dr Skinner’’s favourite work which explores the
sense and feeling of statistical formulae re-emphasising their
importance for a true understanding of statistics; it is his
firm view that the modern trend of shoving a ‘package’ into a
computer to answer statistical problems is intellectually
appalling and few students truly understand what they are trying
to do when they apply statistics to a given statistical problem;
Dr Skinner has a general belief which was shared in some measure
by the great statistician Pascall that the rigid divorcement of
physical sciences from ‘heart understanding’ and ‘emotions’ has
precluded exciting fields of intellectual discovery; we need to
consider for example why we can see or understand three but not
four dimensions and the second but not the third differential in
calculus where for example the rate of change of the rate of
change is graspable but the rate of change of the rate of change
of the rate of change is hardly graspable by the human mind.
Other books of
a more light hearted nature namely “Exercise for Travellers” and
“Rules for Children” which found little favour with his own
children and indeed the publication of four somewhat raunchy
novels was forbidden by Janet who considered that these works
represented a forlorn attempt to revisit lost youth; Janet was
the only one who could keep the great man in his place.
Dr Skinner has
had long life interest song writing and has composed a number of
songs in conjunction of his son who is lead singer in a Glasgow
band called The DKARTS and indeed Dr Skinner has prepared a rock
opera which is nearing completion entitled “Glasgow Rocks
Again”; one of his songs from the opera ”Teddy Girl” is now
frequently requested in pubs and bars in Glasgow.
He plays a
‘pretty decent’ round of golf and played chess for Scotland in
his youth; he is also a long time supporter of West Bromwich
Albion for which our heart felt sympathy.
BOOK
His book the
“Diagnosis and Management of Hypothyroidism” has been written to
draw attention of the medical profession to a major faux pas of
the last two decades This is the obdurate refusal of the medical
profession to recognise that patients can suffer from
hypothyroidism when the thyroid chemistry is deemed to be
‘normal’ when the free thyroxine or the thyroid stimulating
hormone lie between 95% reference intervals. There is a further
problem that when a patient is diagnosed as hypothyroid many
patients receive too low level of thyroid replacement through
servile reliance on thyroid chemistry with (often) cavalier
disregard of how the patient feels accompanied by an implicit
and bizarre belief that a level of thyroid hormone is a better
index of wellbeing than the patient’s own view of his/her
wellbeing.
This situation
has arisen from the mindless deification of ‘evidence-based
medicine’ which usually means laboratory-based-medicine where
one chooses the evidence which suits and ignores evidence which
doesn’t suit. There is no evidence that the efficacy of thyroid
replacement is better correlated with levels of thyroid
chemistry than with the initial clinical picture nor clinical
outcome and in a small pilot study the author has provided
preliminary evidence of this view.
A second issue
concerns use of a porcine thyroid extract (Armour Thyroid) which
was used extensively in the United Kingdom until introduction of
synthetic hormones but was removed from the British National
Formulary for reasons which remain unclear. Dr Skinner argues
that there is a place for this preparation in a number of
patients and practitioners who use all three thyroid
preparations namely thyroxine, triiodothyronine and natural
thyroid extract (Armour Thyroid) have all seen patients who
benefit from Armour Thyroid. It is often posited that the matter
has not been put to placebo controlled trial which is true and
there has never been a clinical trial comprising different
preparations; it is therefore nothing short of presumptuous to
proclaim blanket condemnation for a product on the bizarre
assumption that if a comparison between this product and another
product has never been made the more recently developed
synthetic products are de facto more efficacious; proposition
that the composition of recent batches of Armour Thyroid is not
known seems unlikely given that the product is approved by the
notably strict Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) of the USA.
In summary this
book reasserts the criticality of clinical evaluation in the
diagnosis and management of disease and in particular
hypothyroidism. The book is written in a direct style with some
humorous asides to alleviate the (aforementioned) astonishing
tedium of his literary endeavours. Dr Skinner feels there is
little point in fluffing words and not presenting his views in
simple language which will be palatable to both the laity and
the medical profession.
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